


Administrative Responsibilities

by schumie



Category: Aldnoah.Zero (Anime)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-04-04 04:58:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4126239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schumie/pseuds/schumie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slaine's demands of Harklight have been steadily increasing...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Administrative Responsibilities

**Author's Note:**

> Just something fast I whipped up for my pal last night.

Slaine woke before dawn. By his count, he’d had four hours of sleep, which was passably manageable compared to what he’d been getting recently. He removed himself from the sheets of his bed slowly, careful not to disturb the other body in it.

Slaine got up and put on a fresh uniform. Harklight had set it out for him the night before, as he always had since he’d been assigned to Slaine. Right hand, secretary, ambassador, butler, servant, Slaine had not been deemed important enough to initially have all of these things in multiple people, and when he finally was deemed important enough, he found he was perfectly content with them all being in one person. Slaine hadn’t initially thought anything of it. It was what had been before, and it was practically the only thing he trusted now.

Harklight stirred when Slaine was putting on his left boot. Slaine stopped, wondering himself why he was always so careful to slip out before Harklight woke up. No, he knew why. Because Harklight, already having the responsibility of a Knight, had been given the tasks of secretary, ambassador, right hand, butler, and now Slaine had expanded Harklight’s duties to even include this.

Slaine pulled on his other boot, staring at the mess of black hair and surprisingly broad shoulders in his bed. Harklight’s usually sharp eagle eyes were closed and gave him the appearance of someone much softer, with much less responsibility. When Slaine looked at that face, right then, in Slaine’s bed, he felt one thing and one thing only:

Guilt.

It hadn’t been enough to put all of his trust and therefore all of the pressure onto Harklight, to lean on him as a crutch in times of overwork and dire circumstances, Slaine had also allowed himself to pressure Harklight into giving himself to Slaine, pressured him into taking Slaine, because, honestly, Slaine trusted no one else aboard the craft with the exception of a sleeping princess.

Because Slaine had trust issues, Harklight took the brunt of...everything. Slaine hadn’t forced Harklight to stay with him after hours. Slaine hadn’t ordered him to do anything. But Slaine had known that, if he so much as hinted at that need, Harklight would bend, purely out of the iron devotion Harklight had to Slaine’s cause. Purely because of duty.

Slaine had betrayed Harklight’s duty and his own by manipulating Harklight, and every time he dressed in the cold “dawn” of space and slipped out of bed quietly to get dressed solitarily, it became more difficult to look at those closed eyes. It became more difficult to ask anything of Harklight during the day, when Slaine needed Harklight most. It became a mark on him, like the scars on his chest. Something dirty. Something Slaine never would have done before a princess went to Earth and came back asleep. Before a Count had betrayed one too many times and stepped in the wrong place. Before Slaine became a man of Vers.

With a bitter frown, Slaine quit the room and the loyal man inside it in favor of a cold office desk.

 

* * *

 

“Lord Slaine,”

Slaine was stirred out of his reading. He was penning another agreement for men and supplies (the pledge of loyalty) that would be sent to another of the Orbital Knights. While Slaine had proven himself skilled in battle, it would take more than a Count’s death to convince most of the Versian lords and counts to support Slaine. He did not try to pretend otherwise. He’d been promising a certain amount of Terran land when Harklight had startled him out of it.

“What is it, Harklight,” Slaine asked, dipping his head back down to the pile of papers on his desk. Rejected versions. He needed Harklight there, but he couldn’t seem to look the man in the eye.

“It is half past 2am, My Lord. Perhaps it is time you slept.”

Slaine was surprised himself. Time seemed to slip away from him. He remembered days on Earth. Nights. A cycle of sun and sleep. But each year that passed, he remembered them less, and the days were harder to track in space, depending on where a space craft was sitting, where the sun was...so many factors.

Slaine looked at the pile of crumpled papers on his desk. There were more in the wastebasket. “Perhaps you’re right. I’m achieving nothing in this state.”

“Is there anything I can do to help the process?” Ever-helpful, ever-diligent Harklight.

Slaine ran a hand through his hair and leaned back in his chair. “No...this is something I must do myself. They won’t support a Count who sends them a standard form agreement. I have to be individual about it, I think.”

“Indeed, I believe you are correct, as they each want something different,” Harklight nodded. “But it is still commendable of you to do so.”

“It’s not commendable,” Slaine sighed. “It’s necessary.”

“Yes, Milord.”

Slaine pushed away from his desk and stood, stretching his neck and rubbing his shoulders. “You can turn in now, Harklight.”

Slaine paused, opening his eyes from the stretching. Harklight was looking straight at him with those analyzing, piercing eyes.

Slaine imagined them looking at him they way they had the night before when Slain had told Harklight to undress. Slaine bit the inside of his cheek as punishment for himself. As a reminder that Harklight was not a toy for Slaine to seek relief, physical or mental, from.

“Harklight,” Slaine repeated, sterner, questioningly.

“If I may be so bold...may I ask a question before I retire, Milord?”

Slaine couldn’t look Harklight in the face. Instead he busied himself, stacking the papers quickly, then walked around the desk, past Harklight, towards the door. “If you wish,” Slaine all but sighed. Would it be about more troops? About why Slaine actually kept a sleeping princess in their craft? No, Harklight had never questioned Slaine about that. About Herschel? Would Harklight finally, inevitably, voice complaint against all of Slaine’s misconducts?

Harklight sealed and locked the office door behind them. Only two people had access to that room, and Harklight was one of them. Slaine continued on, not waiting, knowing Harklight’s longer legs would allow him to catch up immediately.

Harklight’s fast, precise steps echoed behind Slaine’s softer, determined ones.

“Milord, forgive me if I am stepping out of line in saying so, but you have seemed...more distracted and taxed lately.”

Slaine could answer that, well, yes, they were at war, Slaine had taken over a position that left him vulnerable to attacks, criticism, and mutiny, and the key to it all--a sleeping girl kept secret in his ship--had failed to wake up. There were many, many reasons for Slaine to be distracted and taxed. But Slaine knew, if he said that, that Harklight would agree, embarrassed and not push the matter any further, but that Harklight would also know Slaine was lying.

So Slaine did not answer, because, “That’s not a question, Harklight.”

“Yes, Milord. Merely an observation. If it is incorrect, I apologize. But, if it is indeed correct, is there anything I can do? I know there are certain tasks only you can do, and I wouldn’t presume to ease your mind, but I can share the burden of tasks and communications. Anything--”

“It is my turn to ask a question,” Slaine interrupted. He was having a hard time focussing on the hallway in front of them. The lights were so bright inside to counterbalance the black outside. He realized he had a headache.

“Yes, Milord,” came the usual, proper remark. Slaine felt the cut on the inside of his cheek with his tongue. He frowned and turned quickly, stopping in front of Harklight who halted immediately.

“How,” Slaine spoke to Harklight’s chest because having to look into those eyes would freeze him, “can you stand to be near me?”

Harklight opened his mouth to interject, but Slaine held up a hand and Harklight stopped. Slaine ran the hand through his hair. A distraction so he didn’t have to look at any of Harklight.

“I run you ragged. You send my letters, record all interactions with other Knights and Counts, oversee the maintenance of the weaponry, the imports and exports that leave here every day. You chart the battles and send out instructions. You fight. You proofread my speeches, see that my uniform is pressed, bring me my meals, and do it all without complaint. You question me only when you believe there is an issue with what I am doing that will somehow disadvantage me in the future. You do all of this with complete devotion. And yet I still ask for more of you.”

Finally, slaine bit his lip and raised his head, looking Harklight sternly in the eyes.

“You give all of that, and yet you still give more devotion outside of all of your numerous tasks. Outside your duties and the extra duties that I’ve given you or you’ve taken onto yourself. You give me your devotion all day, and,” Slaine frowned bitterly, not seeing Harklight, “when I am particularly loathsome and greedy, even some nights.” Slaine’s eyes refocused and he looked Harklight dead in the eye. “So my question is, once again, how can you stand to me near me and walk me back to my quarters, knowing that I might ask you to come inside with me?”

The silence in space, Slaine noted, was deeper and more absolute than it ever had been on Earth. Thus it was that Slaine could hear it plainly when Harklight, eyes still locked with Slaine’s, swallowed nervously.

Harklight, slowly, carefully, as if he couldn’t believe what he himself were doing, raised hand to Slain’s face, fingertips barely brushing Slain’s cheek, where Slaine realized he’d been biting. Slaine could taste a trace of blood when Harklight’s fingers slipped away, trailing for just a moment.

“Milord, nothing I have seen of you so far could convince me you are greedy. And nothing will ever convince me that you are, in any way, loathsome. If anything, I am the greedy man.” Harklight placed a hand to his forehead, as if what he was saying was causing him pain.

“You asked me how I could walk you back to your quarters, knowing that you might ask more of me.” Harklight’s fingers fell from his forehead, leaving the hair there slightly mussed. Harklight’s eyes were hard and steady under it. “How I can walk with you, knowing that, when we get there, you may ask me to come inside…” Harklight took a step towards Slaine, swallowed, and said,

“Milord, I walk with you every night only because of the single, devouring hope that you will.”

Space was glaring and silent in the metal passage where they stood, Slaine’s eyes widening under the influence of shock, shimmering under awe, then narrowing with the understanding of insinuation and honestly.

Slaine closed his eyes, afraid that they might be overwhelmed by what was in front of them. That they might betray him.

Slaine took a long, deep breath, and turned away from Harklight. He began walking, his boots clicking the same way they’d been going before. Unlike before, Slaine did not hear the swift, long strides of Harklight’s boots beside him. Slaine stopped, waiting.

“Come, Harklight. I think we could both use some sleep.”

“Yes, Milord,” Harklight answered, following Slaine away from his own quarters. Slaine could not read the exact emotion in Harklight’s reply, only because he had never heard it before.


End file.
